After a period of cutbacks caused by decreased defense spending, the CEO of Chelmsford-based Mercury Systems (Nasdaq: MRCY) said the firm will look to acquire other companies next year as its revenue grows.

Mercury CEO Mark Aslett said in a recent interview the maker of digital signal processing modules for the defense industry is on an upswing. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014, Mercury's revenues were $53.7 million, up 4 percent from the same period a year before. Next year, revenue is expected to grow 13 percent.

“Because we are lower down in the supply chain, we are one of the first companies to experience the challenges,” he said. “However, we were one of the first to come out of it.”

Aslett said although there are still challenges in the defense industry, Mercury has positioned itself well to take advantage of a few trends happening within the sector(Mercury's defense business is 95 percent of its revenue, while semiconductor and telecommunications customers represent the remaining part). One of those bigger trends is that its customers are relying more on sending their work to others.

“What we’ve found is that our customers are outsourcing more work and they’re doing it because they want to work with companies that fundamentally have the technology,” he said. “But in this environment (we) can do things more quickly and much more cost-effectively than the in-house engineering offices of these companies.”

Earlier this year, reports swirled about one of its customers, Boeing, potentially acquiring Mercury, according to Reuters. Aslett declined to elaborate on the deal. Although Boeing was reported to be a potential buyer, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon are three of Mercury's largest customers. Mercury's modules are used on drones, jets and in radar.

Mercury, which currently has 630 employees, has completed three acquisitions over the past three years. Aslett said those businesses are still in the process of being integrated in to the larger company. Mercury consolidated one of those companies that it acquired, Hudson, N.H.-based Micronetics, into its new advanced microelectronics center in Hudson.

“That’s created a very scalable RF and microwave manufacturing platform (components for electronic warfare) that’s critical to our growth going forward,” said Aslett, who added that growing the employee headcount was a possibility “particularly as we win some of these next-generation awards that we’re competing for.”

Aslett said that by the end of this year, Mercury will have finished its work fitting in its previous acquisitions. And at that point, he said, the company will look at other acquisitions.

“We see the opportunity to continue to grow the business in two dimensions,” said Aslett. The first, he said, would be to continue to acquire companies in RF and microwave, critical components for electronic warfare or radar subsystems. The other focus would be on the processing side.

Aslett said the company is in a good position as it has over $45 million in cash, zero debt on the balance sheet and $200 million credit facility.

“We’ve got more than enough firepower to basically go and grow the business once we get back into that mode,” he said.

In late August, the company announced that it received a $27 million airborne sensor processing order. No other details about the order were disclosed.